Pragmatic Competence And Politeness Principle

A non-native speaker may make pragmatic failure in cross-cultural communication because his or her pragmatic norms are different from the native speaker's pragmatic norms. Some scholars think that the teaching of the native-speaker's culture can solve the issue. Practically, however, we can not solve the issue satisfactorily, for the pragmatic competence has close relation to the politeness phenomena in language use. With the assumption that the non-native speaker's pragmatic competence of the target language mainly depends on whether he or she can use the politeness language appropriately, the thesis focuses on studying pragmatic competence and politeness principle and their correlation as its title suggests.Pragmatic competence is a new topic in the field of linguistics. In cross-cultural communication, it mainly studies: I. The competence of language production; 2. The competence of language interpretation. The competence of 'language' production refers to the ability to convey selfs intention accurately and appropriately according to the context. Language interpretation means the interpretation of a speech act. It includes the interpretation of the propositional meaning and the illocutionary force of a speech act. The former is the literal meaning of the speech act. The latter is its communicative intention.Pragmatic competence can be classified into pragma-linguistic competence and socio-pragmatic competence. The former means the knowledge of the language conventions and the ability to use it in communication. The latter means the sensitivity to what constitutes appropriate linguistic behavior in social context and it is related to the social values. A non-native speaker is required not to transfer the conventions of his or her mother tongue to the conventions of the target language. He or she is also required not to transfer his or her own social values to those of the target language in cross-cultural communication. For example, in English, the expression 'It doesn't matter' , which means the same as the expression" ~ "in Chinese literally, can not be an answer to 'I'm sony' or 'Excuse me', while in Chinese, ~ can be an answer to "XVF~" (apology) ; after receiving someone's help, a Chinese may say "~Mi~" for many times, while an Englishman may say 'Thank you' just once. These are some differences of language conventions between English and Chinese. In conversation, an Englishman may admire someone's girl friend, say, 'How beautiful!'. However, a Chinese may rarely utter the admiration, or he will make both the man and the girl embarrassed. This is an example of the difference of social values between English and Chinese.These pragmatic differences in languages are not at random, but constrained by politeness principle. We know that every language has its own specific conventions of expression. Without the knowledge of such conventions, it is impossible for us to interact with others appropriately. Furthermore, a language is closely related to the social values of the people. Without knowing such relation between language and social values, we also can not communicate with others effectively. Therefore, the phenomena of politeness in language use have close connection with the pragmalinguistic and socio-pragmatic knowledge of the language. Just as pragmatic competence includesivpragma-linguistic competence and socio-pragmatic competence, so politeness principle includes pragma-linguistic principles and socio-pragmatic principles. The former deal with: 1. The use and the illocutionary force of synonymous structures; 2. Speech act strategies. The latter include these three concepts: 1. The concept of privacy; 2. The concept of directness and indirectness; 3. The concept of modesty.With culture divergence, the contents. of these concepts may be different. For example, in English culture, age, income, and marriage status and so on are private topics; people may have a direct or partially direct answer to an invitation, in showing disagreement and complaint and so on. While talking about ot...